Early this morning I collected 5 eggs from the chicken coop and while putting them away I dropped one. Happy day for the Dominator, I called him over and let him clean up the mess. When I stooped to hand-mop the floor he kissed me right on the top of my head, and then stood with his face a couple inches from mine, whole body gently wagging. It was the most purely sweet, endearing moment. Just simple love and gratitude and unashamed expression of it. I wish love could always be that simply expressed and openly received, without all the junk that comes with our fallible human existence.

Wait until there are five minutes left in my therapy session to bring up the real stuff, and then walk out wracked in tears, wrecked in the reality of my pain. Drive the long way, then change my mind halfway and go run errands before going home. Go spray in the granny flat, at least that is something productive, the painting is what I have needed to send for two weeks now. Listen to the roommate washing the dishes. Burn incense and take out my contacts. Look at facebook, oh glorious time waster of all time wasters. Drop a line to a client to push of going to their office, cause obviously, this is gonna take awhile. Open wordpress and go look at a random blog. Start writing. Stop before I get to the real stuff, and correct my capitalization, read, rewrite, read, even this itself is an escape. Maybe we’ll call it a warmup instead.

The house was pretty special. The only reason were able to get it was because the good friend of a good friend was a real estate agent and he stumbled across this deal. Basically a foreclosure came across his desk… and… well let’s just say he pulled some strings. We got a killer deal.

The location was not the best in the world, but it was worth it for the deal we got. It was huge… for us at least. Two story, four bedroom, as soon as we got it we had it professionally painted on the inside. It was just what I wanted. The living areas downstairs were sick, and we had all the DJ equipment set up in the second living area which was like a lounge. The way it all came together it was like a dream. It was like everything in terms of wordly desires was appearing before us. Our little family, us, Domino and the two cats settled right in.

And a short two months later is when my life began to crumble. Part of me will always wonder why he didn’t tell me what was going on before we made a commitment like buying a house, but in the end it was such a blessing from God I can’t question it.

In the landscape of my life, this house and the time I spent there will always be fraught with memories of extremes. That house was filled with the most hope I have ever in my life experienced – it was the house where I came to know God. Where I first experienced the movement of the Spirit in my daily life. Where I was blessed with the beginning of an understanding of Jesus, and a body of Christ that became my family. I learned that life could be better than I ever imagined.

And at the same time, the house was filled with the most intense despair I have ever experienced, as I watched everything around me crumble, fall apart, and be destroyed. By ‘everything around me’, I mean my life. My marriage. My family, both outside and inside. My home. My house. My friends. My belongings. My delusions of what life is supposed to be. My delusions about myself. My perception of what the world is. My pride. My trust. My love. It was all gone.

In that house I remember – after he was gone – sitting in the living room reading my testimony. It was around the time the house went on the market – just 14 short months after we had popped a bottle of champagne in the kitchen to celebrate the purchase. But this was a different celebration, it was the last meeting of my CR 12 step group, and we had a little party and read our testimonies to each other at my house. Might as well, it was empty. I had gotten about halfway through writing mine. I was reading it to my sisters and I just started sobbing. I finished reading it through my sobs – chest heaving, struggling to breathe – and when I was done I just sat there staring at the pages. Empty. My heart felt dead.

That night, as soon as they were gone, I made a phone call. “Mom. Can you please come.”

Through tears. “Yes, baby, of course.”

And then silence as – like so many times before over the last 12 months – she listened to my broken sobs, absorbing the radioactive pain that was emanating from my existence, throbbing from every pore. Inhale, exhale, trying to breathe.

Despair deeper than I can put into words. And at the same time triumph. The victory of Christ in my life. Wonderful and terrible at the same time.

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Today I was sitting in a client’s office in the upper level of her house, and I felt the pleasure of the sunlight shining on me through the vertical blinds while the cool breeze slipped in through the slats, kissing my skin. It felt…

Just. Like. Home.

The home I had in *that* house.

My office had been on the upper level, and it was just how I wanted. I had painted the walls PURPLE – straight up. A desk for working, art table set up, all my junk stored away in the closet. North facing window overlooking the street and in the distance you could see the mountains. It was really cool when there was snow on them, enjoying a sunny winter day in So Cal while gazing upon snow across the way. Many afternoons I spent appreciating the cool kiss of the breeze slipping through the vertical blinds to give me a haunting embrace.

Today… that breeze… it haunted me again.

So now there is a task at hand. I am making new memories to accompany the soundtrack of my life. Maybe next time the breeze will remind me of another day, another person, another tear. Another smile. Maybe that painting will remind me of another room, in another house, where the hope outweighed the despair by a much larger margin. Maybe next time that song will remind me of joy instead of sorrow. Maybe it will remind me of an amazing adventure, hiking the wilderness and exploring caves with my new family that God blessed into my life (we write our addresses in pencil and people wonder at our existence).

I have these little habits that I don’t even realize until – for example – I hear something fall out of my mouth at the end of a prayer. Like,

“InJesusNameAmen”

It’s like one word – injesusnameamen – and when I’m not really thinking about it, there it goes. There if flows out of me, some remnant, some ghost of a spirituality that was ingrained in me as a child, but for whatever reason never really took.

I have the Bible, the little pink pocket Bible – New Testament and Psalms – that I earned as a child for saying (singing) the books of the New Testament. I remember the moment vividly. I had to be somewhere around the age of four. I can see it from my actual point of view, when I close my eyes. I was supposed to say (sing) them in front of – I assume – the class, but I was so scared I wouldn’t do it. I could recite the books, of course, but I didn’t want the attention of getting up in front of the class and saying them. I was afraid. So they let me whisper them to the teacher, but I still had to go up in front of the class to do it. I was even so scared I made him come to the side because I didn’t want to go up front. And then they gave me a little pink Bible with the embossment on the front: Wendy Erin.

I also have an visual of the experience where I am outside myself looking at myself. Of course I am just seeing the little girl from some photo on my grandmother’s dresser. I don’t know what I actually looked like or was wearing or anything, just some fabricated image in my head of the experience. But there she is, up there whispering New Testament song to the teacher.

Matthew, Mark, LukeAndJohn, Ax and the LettersToThe Roh-mans. I still know it well, in fact I sing it in my head almost every time I open the Bible to look up something in the New Testament. Still learning my way around. I wonder how many Bible scholars still use the New Testament song when they are looking up scripture. But the Old Testament? I’m just out of luck, no song for that one. I did memorize the books of the Old Testament at one point – middle school I’m sure – but not being put to music who would be expected to remember them 15 – 20 years later? Why didn’t they ever make up a song for the Old Testament?

I know more than the books though. I know about Joseph and his coat. I know about Abraham. I know about Baby Moses, and – obviously – Noah. Creation, yes. The birth, life, death of Jesus, yes, of course. Tower of Babel. The exodus. The prodigal son. Even some parables I can recall.

But, then…

There are times when I read the Bible, when I’m studying scripture, and this feeling comes over me. It’s like when you see someone that you *know* you have known. But you can’t place where. But you KNOW… that you have known them. There is a certain familiarity that cannot be overlooked, but at the same time you know they are a complete stranger.

So, yes, the Bible and me… we go way back. But somehow…

I just can’t put my finger on it.

And for some reason… it makes my heart ache.

Why didn’t it take? Why did Jesus pass right in front of my face, but not settle in until I was smacked across the face with the horrid-ity of life?

(don’t ask why)

For some reason… even with the faith of my fathers… I had to move beyond it, to find a faith of my own.